Administrative & waste management
The share of jobs within commuting reach of a tract that are in administrative, support, waste management and remediation services.
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Of all the jobs within commuting reach of a tract, the share located in NAICS sector 56. The twenty sectors together account for the whole reachable pool, so this describes the mix of available work rather than its volume. See Accessible jobs for how the pool is defined.
The Census Bureau defines the sector as comprising "establishments performing routine support activities for the day-to-day operations of other organizations," noting that "these essential activities are often undertaken in-house by establishments in many sectors of the economy" and that establishments here specialize in them and sell them on. The listed activities are "office administration, hiring and placing of personnel, document preparation and similar clerical services, solicitation, collection, security and surveillance services, cleaning, and waste disposal services" (2022 NAICS definitions).
Two things follow. First, the sector is heterogeneous: staffing agencies, call centers, janitorial and landscaping firms, security contractors, and waste collection and remediation operations sit in one number. Second, because these are functions other industries can perform in-house, the share partly reflects how far local employers outsource rather than what the local economy produces.
Metrics in this family#
Considerations#
Employment services deserve particular care. Workers supplied to client businesses are employees of the staffing firm, and LODES locates a job at the address the employer reports in its administrative filings — an address that "may or may not be the actual location that a worker reports to most often" (LODES Design and Methodology Report). Temporary and contract staff can therefore be counted at an agency office rather than at the site where they work.
Jobs are counted where the work is located, not where workers live, and are measured at the start of the second quarter, in early April. Landscaping and other seasonal support work is below its summer level at that point.
To protect confidentiality, the Census Bureau infuses noise into the employer and establishment records behind these counts, applying the same factor to a worksite over time so that change across years is not distorted. Industry sector is a secondary characteristic in LODES, estimated during that protection rather than carried through directly, which adds uncertainty to a single tract's sector split.
Alaska and Michigan have no workplace files for the two most recent data years, and Puerto Rico is not covered; tracts there carry no value.
References#
- 12022 NAICS definitionshttps://www.census.gov/naics/2022NAICS/2022_NAICS_Descriptions.xlsx
- 2LODES Design and Methodology Reporthttps://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-52.pdf